The day that someone finally manages to create a climate model that accurately predicts the full range of planetary weather systems, I think we will probably be a hundred years too late. It is such a tough challenge, attempting to pin together the whole range of influences that go in to making our planets weather what it is.

More proof of this difficulty is found in a recent discovery by
researchers working off the west-African coast of Cape Verde. What the
researchers found has totally shifted the thinking concerning two types
of greenhouse gases: ozone and methane.

The group found that 50% more ozone is being destroyed above the
Atlantic Ocean than was previously thought. As a result, through the
release of halogens from the seawater, 12% more methane is being chewed
up as well.

"At the moment this is a good news story: more ozone and methane being
destroyed than we previously thought," says Alastair Lewis of the
National Center for Atmospheric Science in Leeds, UK. "But the tropical
Atlantic cannot be taken for granted as a permanent sink for ozone. The
composition of the atmosphere is in fine balance here."

Methane and ozone number 2 and 3 on the list of most important
anthropogenic greenhouse gases, those created by man. However, once
again heralding back to the inability to clearly predict what is
happening to our weather systems, ozone has commonly been very
imprecisely measured in terms of where and in what quantities it is
being produced and subsequently removed.

This is not a surprise, considering that ozone is often found to be
removed above tropical oceans, where the data is rare. This is why an
international team, including Lewis, headed to the Cape Verde
Atmospheric Observatory, located at 16.848N, 24.871W (use Google
Earth), to be the first to use the Observatory for this purpose.

Ozone is known to be broken down largely by sunlight and water vapor,
through the production of hydroxyl radicals, which then in turn remove
the methane from the atmosphere. Other things, like iodine and bromine,
are also known to break down ozone, and when the researchers plugged
these two values in to their climate model they were better able to
predict the decay of ozone in the region. The results point to the
creation of an ozone sink created by these chemicals.

"It has come as a surprise to find these chemicals, not only in coastal
regions with lots of iodine rich seaweed, but also in the middle of the
Atlantic ocean," says Lewis. "We have no reason to think that our study
area is different from other tropical ocean regions, so similar ozone
destruction could be happening on a huge global scale," he added.

However we need to be careful not to change the balance, as it is very
fine. "It will only take a small increase in nitrogen oxides from
fossil fuel combustion, carried here from Europe, West Africa or North
America on the trade winds, to tip the balance from a sink to a source
of ozone," explains Lewis.

Comments

Please note: there is no "Alastair Lewis", nor a "National Center for Atmospheric Science." There is, however, NCAR: the National Center for Atmospheric RESEARCH and there is nothing on their site to corroborate your story. Please check your facts. Thank-you.